


don't read this if you're having a good day

by pawn_vs_player



Category: Original Work, Poetry/Prose - Fandom
Genre: Depression, Extended Metaphors, Gender Dysphoria, POV Second Person, vent fic, warning: details are muddled and uncomfortable, why can't i update anything? see inside for details
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:07:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24982828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pawn_vs_player/pseuds/pawn_vs_player
Summary: vent.
Kudos: 3





	don't read this if you're having a good day

**Author's Note:**

> im depressed and trying not to do anything else stupid in the pursuit of being less depressed so i wrote and apparently im posting it now. yeet.

there is a hole, a hollow place inside of you, a space where something used to be (or was supposed to be). you are emptied out inside, scraped raw if you could feel, but you can't. you can't feel things inside anymore. the thing you lost was in control of that.

you think you lost it, anyway. your memory has always been bad but you think you remember being a happy child. in all the pictures you are smiling and not just for the camera. everyone says you were a happy kid. a loud kid. excited, stubborn, talkative, pushy. you knew what you wanted and you were determined to get it. you knew how to be happy and what to do when you weren't.

but maybe you've always been this way. maybe you never lost anything, maybe you never had it to begin with. you're not a child anymore but you smile and laugh still, you (say that you) like things and you (say that you) find things funny and you (say that you) love people. you feel things. or your body does, anyway. your mouth curves and your eyes wrinkle, your hands flap and your heels bounce. your body feels and in the core of you there is nothing.

you are empty. you are hollow. if you had nerves there you would ache, you think, but there are no nerves there. there is nothing there except dark water, the same temperature and color as the air, silent and stagnant: when you fall in you can't tell the difference until you begin to drown.

you don't feel things inside. not like everyone else says they do, anyway. your stomach twists and hurts when you mess up bad enough to feel guilty. your skin and bones rasp against one another when the truth of your body clashes too hard against the truth in your mind. an aching, throbbing knot forms under your sternum when you read something so steeped in pain as to grow it in your own barren, empty center. 

so you do feel things. they're just not good things. and they never last. 

you seek out painful stories. you roll pronouns around on your tongue to find the one that scratches the most. you poke and prod the people around you to find the point where they snap.

feeling anything is better than being numb.

because it's not numb, not really. not the same as coming back from the dentist, your tongue a limp weight in your mouth, your cheeks only tangible from the outside. you couldn't feel them, but they were there.

so it's not numb. it's hollow. it's empty.

gray, is what you call it sometimes, trying to explain to other people who will never be able to understand what you're trying to express. flat and gray and empty. fog everywhere, not cold or wet but thick, clinging, smothering. fog and flat plains and hidden ravines with steep, knife-keen sides that cut you as you slide down into murky water that floods your mouth, weighs down your clothes, drips down the back of your neck even after you manage to climb out. 

you are always hollow. you are never safe.

you take pills and you talk and you read, to feel and to distract and to learn. but the hole is always there. the water is always rising. the fog is always waiting.

you are always empty. you are never safe.

you make steps, outside of yourself. you talk to doctors, get new prescriptions, create plans and coping mechanisms. you bite your tongue and swallow down the bitter, tearing truth: it will never be enough. 

you are always fighting. you are never free.


End file.
